Kartje on NFL: Body weight rule crosses the line in protection of quarterbacks

Share this:

Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers gets sacked by Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns during the first quarter at FirstEnergy Stadium on September 9, 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

When hitting an NFL quarterback in 2018, follow these three guidelines to ensure you’re doing so safely and legally …

Don’t hit the quarterback high.

Don’t hit the quarterback low.

Don’t hit the quarterback in the middle, assuming said hit results in your body weight landing on the quarterback.

It’s that simple. And yet, in light of these easy-to-follow rules, the league was somehow still beset by a deluge of roughing-the-passer penalties last Sunday. Who could have possibly seen that coming?

There were 15 such calls in the opening week, more than double the average total for a week’s slate over the past three seasons (6.8). Two of those calls, the league later admitted, were made incorrectly. One, on Cleveland’s Myles Garrett, completely changed the result of a game.

While the NFL’s new helmet rule was the focus of much preseason ire, there was little mention of the newfound emphasis on a rule that’s been on the books since 1995. Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9 of the league rulebook previously stated that “a defensive player must not unnecessarily or violently throw (a passer) down and land on top of him with all or most of the defender’s weight.” That “and” was changed to an “or” this offseason. As evidenced by Week 1, that adjustment was not as subtle as it seemed.

Garrett can attest. On a third-and-7 inside Cleveland’s 10 last Sunday, the Browns’ young pass rusher charged Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, keeping his head to the side and wrapping up with both arms. It was a clean, fundamental tackle. As they fell to the turf, Garrett even rolled off Roethlisberger. The pass fell incomplete. But a flag was thrown. Roughing the passer was called.

Garrett threw his hands up in confusion. Instead of kicking a field goal, the Steelers scored a touchdown. Instead of a Browns win, Cleveland and Pittsburgh tied.

Later, Al Riveron, the NFL’s head of officiating, would clarify the penalty was a mistake. But the damage was done, and his explanation of the miscall only raised more questions. Garrett’s hit, he said, “is not what we would consider contact that rises to the level of a foul.”

So, where exactly is that line? No one seems to be sure.

“I don’t get the concept of the rule,” Rams defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh said. “With physics, when you tackle somebody, facing them as (the league) wants you to, not tackling them from the side or low or high … you’re going to land on them, at some point in time.”

The NFL has had trouble with simple physics before, of course. But in this case, perhaps for the first time ever, the league has actually jumped the shark when it comes to protecting football’s most important position.

Even quarterbacks who stand to benefit from not having 300-pound linemen fall on them understand it’s a near-impossible situation to mitigate. Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers watched Garrett’s hit on Roethlisberger earlier this week and found himself questioning what was right.

“As quarterbacks, we appreciate it,” Rivers said. “We also understand that it’s tough for those defenders. There’s a lot of stipulations what they can and can’t do.”

Aaron Donald found himself up against one of those stipulations already this season. Against the Raiders, Donald was called for roughing the passer when he lost his balance and pulled down quarterback Derek Carr from the ground, hitting him lower than legally allowed. It was a textbook roughing-the-passer call, and it also resulted in the NFL fining Donald more than $20,000 on Friday. Still, it begs a question that’s already bothering defensive players across the league: What exactly is Donald supposed to do?

“Really, if you’re going to play that right, it almost seems like you have to regain your balance and then go for him,” Rams coach Sean McVay said.

Still, as impossible as that scenario might be, it’s understandable that hitting a quarterback as low as Donald did would result in a penalty. Other positions are also protected by helmet-to-helmet hits or contact that’s unnecessarily low or dangerous.

But no other position is protected from a player landing on top of you. That’s where Suh, a noted hater of quarterbacks, takes offense.

“Protect the quarterback, sure,” Suh says, “but protect every other position in the league.”

He knows it’s futile to complain about the NFL’s most important and marketable position. There’s a reason the rule’s new emphasis comes right on the heels of Aaron Rodgers’ season-ending collarbone injury a year ago.

Ultimately, Suh says, it is what it is. He plans to ignore it. In fact, he may be one of the few who can hit a quarterback without landing on him at all.

“I’ve been blessed to be strong enough that I can hit a quarterback and just knock him down,” Suh says. “I would imagine now that’s the best option.”

BEST BET OF WEEK 2

Chargers (-7.5) over Bills. Sure, the Bills won’t be as bad as they were a week ago. I’m not sure you could recreate how poorly they played against Baltimore if you tried. But the Chargers are coming to Buffalo with a far more explosive offense than Flacco and Co., following a divisional loss they’ll be eager to put behind them.

Season record: 1-0Last week: Rams (-4.5) over Raiders — WIN

FANTASY PLAY OF THE WEEK

The entire Chargers offense. Perhaps you noticed a pattern here. The Bills are, well, very bad. Joe Flacco threw just two passes in the second half and still ended up with 236 yards and three touchdowns. The Chargers will rely on Melvin Gordon more than the Ravens relied on their run game, but with the Bills likely to put up a bit more of a fight, there’s plenty of points to go around. Remember, they broke 50 against a better Buffalo team a year ago.

THIS WEEK IN THE KAEPERNICK DEBATE …

In the middle of his sermon last Sunday, an Alabama pastor cut up Nike gear in front of his congregation in protest of the company’s new campaign centered around Colin Kaepernick.

Ah, yes … reminds me of that New Testament story when Jesus cut up a pair of Nikes, instead of giving them to the poor.

TOP 5 … MOST RIDICULOUS WEEK 1 OVERREACTIONS

5. Sam Darnold is going to be a star. Let’s slow our roll on Darnold, who, after throwing a pick-six to start his career, easily diced up Detroit and suddenly became the breakout quarterback of 2018, non-Patrick Mahomes division. Sure, Darnold is probably going to be good. But he’s also going to have his issues to iron out. His propensity for turnovers, especially, remain a concern.

4. The Chiefs are the favorites in the AFC. If the Chargers hadn’t shot themselves in the foot so many times, we might have thought differently about the Chiefs today. Instead, Mahomes is Brett Favre and the Chiefs are already buying tickets to Atlanta. Let’s not forget that Kansas City has an actively bad defense, and like Darnold, Mahomes has been known to give the ball away.

3. James Conner is basically Le’Veon Bell, but cheaper. Fantasy owners are loving James Conner, and rightfully so after he totaled 192 yards and two touchdowns in Week 1. But Bell is a unique talent, whose patience as a runner and ability as a receiver make him near-one-of-a-kind. That doesn’t mean the Steelers should pay him, if Conner continues to produce, though.

2. The Saints are no longer contenders. New Orleans didn’t endear themselves to any NFL survivor league players – myself included – in a shootout loss to the Bucs. But to stick a fork in their season right now would be seriously premature. Drew Brees and the offense were still en fuego in Week 1. The defense may not be what it was a year ago, but it’ll be better than the abomination we saw last week.

1. Jon Gruden is doomed as the Raiders’ coach. There’s a lesson here: Don’t trade your team’s best player the week before you coach your first game in a decade. Gruden got outcoached down the stretch against the Rams, but at the start, he had some interesting things going. Oakland won’t be good, but with a $100 million contract, Gruden has some serious leash.

Ryan Kartje is a sports features reporter, with a special focus on the NFL and college sports. He has worked for the Orange County Register since 2012, when he was hired as UCLA beat writer. His enterprise work on the rise and fall of the daily fantasy sports industry (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/industry-689093-fantasy-daily.html) was honored in 2015 with an Associated Press Sports Editors’ enterprise award in the highest circulation category. His writing has also been honored by the Football Writers Association of America and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ryan worked for the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times and Fox Sports Wisconsin, before moving out west to live by the beach and eat copious amounts of burritos.